Hans Bethe Biography

Born Hans Albrecht Bethe, July 2, 1906, in Strasbourg, Alsace-Lorraine;
died of congestive heart failure, March 6, 2005, in Ithaca, New York.
Physicist. Over the course of his more than 60-year career, Nobel laureate
Hans Bethe published more than 300 scientific papers, averaging one
significant breakthrough a decade. One of the leading theoretical
physicists of the 20th century, Bethe is best known for figuring out how
stars produce light and in 1967 won the Nobel Prize in Physics for this
work. In addition, Bethe played a key role in the development of the
atomic bomb that ended World War II, though after its use, he spent the
remainder of his life calling for a halt to nuclear proliferation.

An only child, Bethe (pronounced BAY-tuh) was born into a family of
academicians on July 2, 1906, in Strasbourg, Alsace-Lorraine, an area
France and Germany spent decades fighting over. At the time of
Bethe's birth, the city was part of Germany. Bethe's father,
a Protestant, was a physiologist at the University of Strasbourg and later
taught in Frankfurt. His Jewish mother was also the child of a professor.
Because the family was not religious, Bethe never considered himself
Jewish.

Early on, Bethe demonstrated great ability in mathematics, though his
father tried to squelch his interest because he wanted Bethe to fit in
with his peers and not get too far ahead. Bethe, however, swiped his
father's trigonometry and calculus books and read them in secret.
He studied at the University of Frankfurt, then earned a doctorate from
the University of Munich in 1928, graduating summa cum laude.

Bethe first taught physics close to home in Frankfurt and Stuttgart, then
ventured out to Cambridge, England, and Rome. In the early 1930s he
returned to Germany to teach at Tubingen University only to find his
classes filled with swastika-clad students. Within a year he was let go as
Adolf Hitler invoked a policy of anti-Semitism throughout the land.

Bethe fled to Britain and later to the United States, where in 1935 he
landed at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he spent the
remainder of his academic career. Bethe drew attention to himself shortly
thereafter by publishing, with the help of various collaborators, three
articles on thermo-nuclear reactions in the American Physical
Society's
Reviews of Modern Physics.
At the time, nuclear physics was a new field of study and these papers,
which became known as "Bethe's Bible," served as the
primary text on the subject for decades.

One of Bethe's most amazing discoveries came after a 1938
astrophysicists conference at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C.
There, the question was posed: What makes stars shine? Philosophers and
astronomers had sought the answer for centuries. It took Bethe six weeks
to end the mystery. Relying on his knowledge of nuclear reactions and
fusion, Bethe churned out a stack of pencil and paper calculations and
published them in a paper called "Energy Production in
Stars." In the paper, Bethe described the process by which the sun,
and similar stars, merge hydrogen into helium, thus discharging energy
that bursts forth as heat and light.

In 1939 Bethe married Rose Ewald, daughter of German physicist Paul Ewald
of Stuttgart, whom Bethe had worked under. Two years later, he became a
U.S. citizen and as World War II unfolded, he joined
the war effort by working on radar technology at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. Later, he was appointed chief theoretical
physicist of the secret Manhattan Project lab in Los Alamos, New Mexico,
which developed the atomic bomb.

At Los Alamos, Bethe directed teams of leading physicists in carrying out
the complex calculations necessary to build the bomb. His team figured out
how much plutonium would be needed and worked to figure out if such a
detonation would ignite the earth's atmosphere and destroy the
planet. Team members began calling him "The Battleship"
because of the way he destroyed potential problems by steaming right
through to an answer.

Though Bethe helped develop the A-bomb, he believed building it was
morally wrong; however, he was eager to help defeat Nazism and figured if
he did not help the United States develop the A-bomb, Germany would soon
enough, making Hitler unstoppable. After the war Bethe returned to
academia and became a vocal critic of the nuclear arms race. He helped
negotiate the first nuclear test ban treaty, which essentially banned all
atmospheric tests. By the 1990s Bethe was calling for a total ban on
nuclear tests.

Bethe retired from teaching in 1975 but continued writing professional
papers and near the end of his life was studying and writing about the
collapse of stars. To the end, he never turned to computers for
calculations, relying instead on a slide rule, pencil, and paper. In his
free time he enjoyed skiing, mountain climbing, and traveling, especially
by train. He continued advising presidents, a service he began in the
Harry Truman administration and carried on through President Bill Clinton.

Most of all, Bethe was known for inspiring generations of Cornell
physicists. Speaking to the
Los Angeles Times,
the late MIT physicist Philip Morrison, who worked at Los Alamos with
Bethe, once said, "Of all the people who are so bright and
accomplished, few are so sweet of temperament. He finds errors in such a
way as you're pleased to have the help."

Bethe died of congestive heart failure on March 6, 2005, at his home in
Ithaca, New York. He was 98. He is survived by his wife, Rose; his son,
Henry; his daughter, Monica; and three grandchildren.
Sources:
Independent
(London), March 9, 2005, p. 34;
Los Angeles Times,
March 8, 2005, p. A1, p. A22;
New York Times,
March 8, 2005, p. A1;
Washington Post,
March 8, 2005, p. B6.

—
Lisa
Frick

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